MSI Wind Top AE220 does full 1080p Blu-Ray in an all-in-one

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Every month, nettops — those affordable all-in-ones running Intel Atom CPUs first marketed as light-computing machines — become more and more capable. Fused with chipsets like NVIDIA’s ION platform, nettops are starting to become indistinguishable in performance from median-priced desktops in things like video decoding performance. The line is being blurred between nettops and PCs.

Nothing blurs the line more than MSI’s latest Wind machine, though: the Wind Top AE220. A multitouch all-in-one packing a 21.5 inch, 16:9 LCD display running at 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, the Wind Top AE220’s biggest boast is that it allows for full 1080p video decoding on the fly, with no performance hit.

What’s strange about this machine is that while it’s branded as a nettop, and while it packs NVIDIA ION, it isn’t really a nettop, since it eschews an Intel Atom CPU in favor of a choice between either Intel’s 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T660 CPU or a 2.1GHz Pentium dual-core T4300 processor.

Otherwise, the AE220 is specced out with 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, a combo Blu-Ray and DVD burner drive. It also contains six USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, Ethernet, S/PDIF, a multi-card reader, HDMI and VGA inputs, and 802.11 b / g / n WiFi, although no Bluetooth. It also ships with an infrared remote control in the box. You can also VESA mount the AE220 to the wall.

The AE220 ships with Windows 7 Home Premium, and is on sale today, priced starting at $749.99.